Friday, 21 February 2014

It's pom pom time! Regular readers will know I've been a fan of DIY tissue pom poms ever since I made them for my own wedding. They were such a success, and so easy to make, that I've been recommending them as the cheap and chic wedding decoration. Fab couple Joe and Mimi chose pastels as their wedding colour palette, and I love their cheerful peach, pink and cerise poms. Throw in a Kate Moss-inspired wedding cake, a brilliant photo booth and hundreds of vases of avalanche roses, and I'm a very happy wedding blogger indeed. Enjoy Chris Giles Photography's brilliant wedding pictures, and Mimi's answers to the Before the Big Day Bride's Questionnaire. There's tonnes of great tips and vendors there for you to steal!

Joe and I got married on July 27th 2013. The service was held at St. Margaret's Church, Fernhurst in West Sussex, and then the reception was at The Duke Of Cumberland Arms, a beautiful 15th Century pub.

I didn't have any bridesmaids - instead my daughter Evie and my niece, Holly were my flower girls. They wore beautiful silk chiffon dresses from I Love Gorgeous, which had a dusky pink satin ribbon tie and hand embroidered roses.

The Duke Of Cumberland Arms was the perfect location for our wedding breakfast and reception - we fell in love with its magnificent views and glorious gardens. Also, Joe has known the award-winning head chef and owner, Simon Goodman, for many years, so we knew the food would be exceptional!

Our wedding photographer, Chris Giles Photography, was a recommended to me, and I have to say Chris and his partner Laura were amazing on every level and worked so hard for us on the day. We met Chris and Laura several times before the wedding, and on the day they certainly exceeded our expectations, right through to the delivery of our photos - which we simply love.

Chris and Laura made us feel suitably relaxed throughout the day, and we are thrilled to be able to look back through our amazing pictures, with such fond memories, which we will now keep forever. We honestly couldn't recommend Chris enough.

We had four pageboys - our son Harry, and my nephews, Tom, Charlie and Zak. They wore Ralph Lauren chino's and white linen shirts and tank tops from Little Linens and little white Converse!

As an added wedding detail, we decided to get perfectly round, pink balloons filled with helium for the children. They were a huge success, and gave us some amazing photos.

We had a fantastic wedding florist - The Floral Emporium at Secretts, Milford. My flowers had a 'hand-picked' vintage and country feel about them. We chose soft and pastel colours, and florists Karen and Vicky were absolutely incredible.

Karen and Vicky filled hundreds of vases for me, as well as doing large displays, and they made our amazing day beautiful and full of love!

I absolutely loved planning our wedding, however I wouldn't advise doing it whilst working, and trying to bring up a young family, especially during the latter few weeks. I was exhausted by the time the day actually arrived, as I am sure most brides are!!!

Luckily my parents, friends and family were so generous with their time, and always went out of their way to help as best as they could.

My advice for other brides would be to enjoy it - blink on the day, and it has gone.....Everyone said to me to 'make sure you stand back and take a deep breath to enjoy it all'. I felt like I didn't have time to follow the advice I was given, so I advise any future bride and groom to do exactly that!

Also because we weren't going on honeymoon straight away, we met up with our friends the following day for lunch, which was a great way to already start reminiscing. It was fantastic to see the pictures everyone had taken on their iPhones! A nice way to spend the day before the wedding blues kicked in!!

We decided not to have any wedding favours. We'd already over-spent on our budget, and we believed that our friends would probably prefer an extra glass of Prosecco! I reckon we made a good call, with no complaints made!

My husband is an excellent chef for his sins, and he specialises in cakes and cake decorating! He replicated a Peggy Porschen Cake which Kate Moss had at her wedding.

It was a pyramid of five cakes, very simple and elegant, with each tier a different depth. Joe crusted with droplets of icing sugar blossoms, and the cake sat on a bed of beautiful fresh roses. As an added wedding detail, Chris Giles set up a Photo Booth for us in the evening, which was a huge success, and gave us some amazing photos!

To end our perfect day, we chose an amazing band called Alex and Phil Extravaganza, who absolutely got the party started for us. The four boys completed our day, along with my amazing daddy who played his clarinet with the band as a last minute surprise for us both {which was incredible}. They were great entertainment, and all of our friends had lots of fun. The musicians were truly impressive.We hired giant light letters showing off our LOVE to each other!!! They were supposed to be in the beautiful garden, but because we got married on the only Saturday in July this year where it rained, we used the letters inside the pub. They were a great way to decorate, and added some mood lighting for when the band played.

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